actually on further analysis it isn' this bad *all* the time. Today happened to
be a Whaler tournament as well as a beautiful weekend day. Weekdays,
like yesterday, 90% of the people on the water behave and are courteous and the other 10% can be usually cowed into behaving.
On weekend days like today, perhaps 75% of the boats behave politely, but the other 25% are a larger number than weekdays, and thus more noticable. But most people are civilized; don't get me wrong; the majority of the people out there are people I'm perfectly ahppy to share a pod of bonito with or drift through a rip w/.
Positive story now :-)--yesterday I was drifting across the O.B. Ferry dock along with 5 or 6 other boats. Pods of bonito would pop up anywhere between the dock and the green can a quarter mile off shore. All of the boats commonly followed the unspoken rule to start upccurent of the dock, drift past it, keep going perhaps a few hundred yards p ast the dock, then make a large and relatively quiet circle back to the upcurrent area. If fish popped up no one ran, we all just took our chances on the drift.
On one drift I hooked up right in front of the ferry dock with 3 or 4 boats outside of me. As is the case w/ bonito it went outwards fast and was instantly under at least 2 of the boats. All of the seaward boats patiently waited till I got the bonito under control, got it inside them before they continued their casting. When another boat tried to cut through he was yelled of not just by me, but also by some of the other boats.
There are more good people out there than not.
I read Nelson's bonehead article - and I thought I invented the "run and gun" term :-)....